Following indications yesterday that more accounts were being granted access to the Diablo III beta test, the Diablo III Website announces the beta will indeed be opened this weekend to anyone with a Battle.net account for stress testing. The open portion of the beta will begin at 3:00 pm EDT today and will run through Monday at 1:00 pm EDT. The accompanying FAQ explains how this will operate, and notes that while Korean players cannot participate, they will be holding a separate invitation-only event in Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. The invitation only closed beta will continue as planned until May 1st. To get a head start, you can download the client now from Battle.net.

NKD wrote on Apr 20, 2012, 16:57:A lot of whining about a stress test. The whole point of this is to blow the servers up so that they can be more prepared come launch.

Not totally, the ultimate point is hoping they don't blow up so you can go live. But face it no matter how many issues this or Tera have, the date is set it's shipping ready or not.

Servers were not ready.

I doubt that their goal is to have zero wait at launch for everyone. That kind of readiness would imply a lot of hardware (and money) wasted on every single other day until the next big thing launches. Rather than getting perfect turnaround they'd probably aim for a "good enough" point that keeps people sufficiently close to happy and the game uploaded to everyone within a reasonable window. Overstress conditions would be good data to have to identify the amount of expansion needed.

So basically you're saying that they're planning to fuck over some of their users to save some cash on hardware? This game requires an online connection to their servers, and you're claiming that they are planning to have insufficient capacity to handle peak loads. Nice.

It would be my guess. There are peak loads and there are peak loads, and one like this only comes along once every few years. They might bank on people cutting a little slack on launch day, especially given how companies like Valve can't do better, either. Yes, everyone has to be connected afterwards, but they're not going to be downloading however many GB all at once every day.

They probably have the money to pay for the spike even so, but I really doubt that the ill will generated from people forced to play on day 2 would be greater than that cost. Otherwise, just from an environmental standpoint I'd be kind of put off by the power load forced onto the environment. I mean, seriously, "fucked over" if it's not maxing out your bandwidth on the same day a million other people are working the same servers?

NKD wrote on Apr 20, 2012, 16:57:A lot of whining about a stress test. The whole point of this is to blow the servers up so that they can be more prepared come launch.

Not totally, the ultimate point is hoping they don't blow up so you can go live. But face it no matter how many issues this or Tera have, the date is set it's shipping ready or not.

Servers were not ready.

I doubt that their goal is to have zero wait at launch for everyone. That kind of readiness would imply a lot of hardware (and money) wasted on every single other day until the next big thing launches. Rather than getting perfect turnaround they'd probably aim for a "good enough" point that keeps people sufficiently close to happy and the game uploaded to everyone within a reasonable window. Overstress conditions would be good data to have to identify the amount of expansion needed.

So basically you're saying that they're planning to fuck over some of their users to save some cash on hardware? This game requires an online connection to their servers, and you're claiming that they are planning to have insufficient capacity to handle peak loads. Nice.

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell (I think...)

NKD wrote on Apr 20, 2012, 16:57:A lot of whining about a stress test. The whole point of this is to blow the servers up so that they can be more prepared come launch.

Not totally, the ultimate point is hoping they don't blow up so you can go live. But face it no matter how many issues this or Tera have, the date is set it's shipping ready or not.

Servers were not ready.

I doubt that their goal is to have zero wait at launch for everyone. That kind of readiness would imply a lot of hardware (and money) wasted on every single other day until the next big thing launches. Rather than getting perfect turnaround they'd probably aim for a "good enough" point that keeps people sufficiently close to happy and the game uploaded to everyone within a reasonable window. Overstress conditions would be good data to have to identify the amount of expansion needed.

McJammiepants wrote on Apr 20, 2012, 15:48:It is pretty humorous that they're showcasing a major reason folks are pissed about the battlenet, always online structure. Even though they're using this as a means to lessen the prevalence for the actual release, we all know there will still be problems. It's even worse that you're reliant on their servers for core game data, rather than just a quick ping/pong to verify the games validity.

At least we'll get access to the forum DLC on day one so we have something to do while we wait.

OT but that's pretty much the best name on these forums You can't argue with someone named McJammiepants.

Tumbler wrote on Apr 20, 2012, 09:25:I'm curious what all the fuss is about.

Well, for starters, make sure your nintendo 8-bit system is connected to the internet. Oh, you need an internet connection from service provider for that by the way. Once you've connected your nintendo 8-bit system to the internet, please connect to nintendo's site. Remember? You cannot play your cartridge game unless nintendo says so.

Okay, start playing. But don't do anything tricky or sudden maneuvers with your character! You might lag and get frustrated that your maneuver didn't go as planned, or didn't start as quickly as you'd hope it'd start. You were so close!; you were 1 inch away from being hit the last hit to death. You almost dodged that swing! If only you had 60 more miliseconds of time!

Ask yourself "why do i have to connect to nintendo?" See if the answer is really THAT good of an answer.

Cutter wrote on Apr 20, 2012, 14:53:Well, this is fucking ridiculous. Not only can I not even get it installed - like a lot of other people - but I can't even post in their tech support forums. Yeah, that's real smart. Keep people from accessing the forums when they need feedback. And this thing is supposed to launch in 3 weeks? LOL.

It installed fine for me, can't log in obviously and doubt anyone will be able to for hours. But yeah, good luck Blizzard. lol

Getting "Error 3005" when I try to login to the game. And apparently their website is fucked now too. Fun stuff.

If youíre seeing that error code then the servers are down. This is not something new to the beta. They take them off line at times. Either for maint or other reasons. But that is a server off line code.

And donít be a bit surprised if youíre not able to login or have difficulty. I suspect that blizz is taking this opportunity to gage the server load to see how they are going to balance this out.

It is pretty humorous that they're showcasing a major reason folks are pissed about the battlenet, always online structure. Even though they're using this as a means to lessen the prevalence for the actual release, we all know there will still be problems. It's even worse that you're reliant on their servers for core game data, rather than just a quick ping/pong to verify the games validity.

At least we'll get access to the forum DLC on day one so we have something to do while we wait.

Wowbagger_TIP wrote on Apr 20, 2012, 15:24:Yeah, I kinda thought they might be prepared this time, given all the experience they've had with this kind of thing in the past.

It's usually on purpose. It's similar to an MMO in many ways, they're putting a lot of overhead on the server with their online-only implementation. The stress test is likely just a bunch of provisioning scenarios with minimum capacities, rollovers and all that fun NOC stuff. I hope this helps them sort out launch day because that will be really ugly if the servers are messed up. In the past you could at least play the SP for awhile while battle.net was down but they won't have that luxury with this game.

If Diablo 3 has a consolized UI then so did Diablo 1, Diablo 2, Titan Quest, Torchlight... you get where I'm going with this.

Beta is working fine for me, but I've also been a regular tester for the last several months. The stress test servers must be different from the regular beta servers because I'm still connected and playing my Demon Hunter with 0 issues.

LordLaggart wrote on Apr 20, 2012, 15:11:Did you really expect to have everything in a timely manner? I bet even your mom is trying to log on. Try logging on 50 times in a row in an attempt to bring the whole Blizzard network down

DDoS.

Anyways, this happened before to Blizzard and others. Not new!

Yeah, I kinda thought they might be prepared this time, given all the experience they've had with this kind of thing in the past.

Yeah no kidding. I wonder if any game companies have been prepared to do well.